


Mules in Horses' Harness, aka the Junior Varsity Remix

by cofax



Series: This is Not Wartime [12]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Apocafic, Gen, This is Not Wartime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-17
Updated: 2009-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:30:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cofax/pseuds/cofax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Cameron Mitchell met John Sheppard was five days after the Goa'uld attacked Earth, and Cam was raiding a hardware store twenty miles south of Boise for ammunition and camping supplies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mules in Horses' Harness, aka the Junior Varsity Remix

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the [This is Not Wartime series](http://mouldiwarps.shriftweb.org/Not_Wartime.html), but should be readable on its own. Set some weeks after _A Dirty Wind_. Beta by [](http://vee-fic.livejournal.com/profile)[**vee_fic**](http://vee-fic.livejournal.com/).

His urine steams as it hits the ground, disappearing into the dirty late-summer snow at the base of yet another pine tree. Cameron thinks of it as a pine tree, but for all he knows it's a spruce, or a juniper, or a purple-boled oak. It doesn't really matter, though. In the last two years his world has narrowed down to tunnel vision: how much damage can he do, and how much damage will he take while he does it?

Twenty-four months. Cam can count them on his fingers and toes, or in the faces of the men and women who have come and gone under his command since the world went to hell.

"Under his command"-- that's a bitter joke. He's a pilot, not a battalion commander. Not a strategist; a master's degree in military history doesn't mean he can keep a polyglot gaggle of civilians, military, and river rats alive and pointed in the same direction. Sure, he can tell you more than anyone needs to know about Napoleon's failed campaign in Russia--_never get involved in a land war in Asia_\--but he's closer to Custer than Patton. If he's all Earth has to defend itself from the Goa'uld, they're all doomed.

Kelly and Perez are squatting around the morning fire when he gets back to the camp site. Perez was Army: he's Cam's inside man at the Depot, and Kelly is a short black woman with a wicked talent for puns and no sense of direction. They're both filthy and ragged, dark heads and dirty faces almost indistinguishable in the early light.

"Colonel," nods Perez, while Kelly just grins, a flash of white teeth, and husks, "Shaft," through her ruined vocal cords. Kelly was in San Francisco for the first three months after the snakes hit; she's never talked about it.

It's still cool here in the morning, although the sky is clear above the tops of the trees; it's going to be warm today. Around him a dozen bodies shuffle and mutter as the sun hits the floor of the cramped little clearing. They've been here for five days, waiting for the recon data they need, and Cam's getting nervous. They're not that far off the beaten path, and turning in "insurgents", as Lugh calls them, wins the reporter a week's supply of provisions.

He crouches next to the fire and pours hot water into a plastic coffee mug, stirring in a cautious teaspoon of dirty brown powder. They still have instant coffee left, although he's cut himself back to a cup every other day. The rest of the time it's cold water--thanking God every day that the snakes left the water supply system alone--or some damned awful tea made of pine needles. "Shep come in yet?" he asks, although he knows it's a fool's question.

"No sir," says Perez, around a mouthful of canned beans.

_Figures_, thinks Cam, but doesn't say it out loud. Nobody else goes out alone but Sheppard. Cam _knows_ no one should travel alone--he's heard the stories--but Sheppard has no patience for the buddy system, and so far it's worked out. Sheppard has always come back, if not exactly when he said he would.

"Probly stopped to see that gal in Rocklin," says Kelly, with an evil glint in her eyes. "Or was it Placerville?"

"Santa Cruz!" pipes up Harte, grinning as he runs his fingers through his filthy red mop. "Hell, Hollywood!"

Harte's the class clown, and that kicks off a volley of increasingly raucous cracks about Sheppard's storied sexual escapades, a common topic of conversation--when Sheppard isn't around to hear it. Cam lets it run until he sees Ying twitch, her gaze dropping to the dirt, and then he cuts it off.

"All right, listen up, folks. Harte and Perez, I want you on the trailhead, and this time no sleeping. Team A's doing hand-to-hand drills. Team B's running--" Cam pauses, considering the weather, "--up to the intersection with the Valley View trailhead and back." There's a chorus of groans, but it could be worse: it's only five miles to Valley View, and they'll be done by noon. "After lunch we'll work with the C4. We clear? Go on, then. Let's get moving." Stick, stick, carrot.

A rail-thin figure topped with a dark mop of hair pushes through the dispersing crowd of two dozen or so men and women. "Awww, c'mon, teach, don't I get to play, too?"

Turns out Sheppard's back after all.

*

The first Jaffa Cameron Mitchell ever saw killed a homeless guy on the street in Boise at sunset, slamming the man to the ground with his staff and then reversing it neatly to put a blast into his face.

No, that's a lie. The first Jaffa was flying a Death Glider in circles over Mountain Home Air Force Base, taking potshots at random targets in the wreckage of what had once been the 366th Fighter Wing. Now the entire base was a smoking tangle of debris, smashed machines and billion-dollar aircraft indistinguishable from the charred bodies of service personnel. But Cam couldn't see through the viewscreen of the Death Glider, so he figured it didn't really count.

*

"Swinton!" Cam snaps, as the teams disperse into the forest. "Thought I told you--"

"Ah, cut him some slack," says Sheppard, as he drops to an easy crouch next to the fire and wets a rag with hot water. His voice comes out mumbled as he wipes his face clean of dust and sweat. He smells rank: he must have pushed hard during the night. "I swung around and came down the ridge--no way was Swinton gonna see me."

"You said that in Auburn, too," says Cam, fixing his gaze on the fire.

There's a silence long enough for Cam to wish he'd kept his mouth shut, before Sheppard says blandly, "Well fuck you very much too, Colonel. You want my intel or not?"

Cam slugs back the rest of his cooling--and awful--coffee. "Lay it on me."

The fire pit is surrounded by an assortment of logs and granite boulders; Sheppard takes his time settling back against a rock, stretching his feet out next to the fire, before he starts talking. Cam knows he's doing it on purpose just to be irritating.

Every once in a while Cam tries to like John Sheppard. The guy loves to fly, like Cam. Military family, like Cam. Caught flat-footed off-post when the aliens attacked, like Cam. But that's pretty much where the resemblance ends. Because Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, by God, is--well, _was_\--a newly-minted F-302 pilot with a foot in the door of the most exclusive military club on the planet. He was going places: maybe, if he was lucky, even _off_ this planet. Major John Sheppard, on the other hand, is a slippery bastard who, Cam suspects, was about eighteen inches from dismissal when the snakes hit. Sheppard doesn't give a damn about rank or military protocol. He is, however, the best damned ground fighter Cam has ever met. He can get into and out of almost anywhere unseen, and kill people like someone out of a movie. It's unnerving.

On his more charitable days, Cam recognizes that the only reason his squad has done as well as it has, in this ugly little war, is because of John Sheppard. The knowledge curdles his stomach. On his bad days--well, this might be one of Cam's bad days. He pulls a stick out of the fire, its end still smoldering, and prods at Sheppard's boot with it, right at the center of the sole, where the tread is thinnest. "Give, Sheppard. I don't have the time to wait on you."

"Bastard," grouses Sheppard, jerking his foot away, but it doesn't sound like his heart is in it. He grins, instead, a lazy smile, a smile that _knows something_ that Cam doesn't. "You're gonna shit your pants, Colonel."

*

The first Jaffa Cameron killed was just a kid, some youngster who wandered away from his squadron to check out the sound of a girl crying behind a house in a suburban neighborhood of Boise. Cam took him with a kitchen knife, cutting his throat fast and silently, then easing the body to the ground, careful to keep the blood off himself. When he was sure the Jaffa was dead, he found a set of gardening shears in the garage and cut the symbiote into little pieces.

In the three days since the attack, he hadn't found any active service members who knew anything about the Goa'uld. So far as he could tell, he knew more about the invaders than anyone in a five-hundred mile radius. It was up to him to do... something.

*

"Sheppard--" Cam doesn't have the patience for this. If the war ever ends, he's going to retire and run a hardware store. No more cajoling suspicious civilians into donating food, no more training naive enthusiasts with more hope than sense how to hold, shoot, and maintain a weapon, no more tolerating insubordinate jerkoffs like Sheppard just so he can get his twenty and his pension. But the war isn't ever gonna end, and Cam's going to be shackled to John Sheppard until one or both of them die.

"I went to Frisco," Sheppard says, the smile dropping away.

Cam blinks but doesn't say anything. Sheppard is supposed to avoid San Francisco: the city is crawling with Jaffa, and Lugh, the local Goa'uld, doesn't have a nice reputation. None of them do. Cam doesn't point out the riskiness of the move. "And?"

Sheppard scratches at a pale scar on his jaw. "And Vegas is gone."

"Gone? What, like, out of contact?" Do they have any contacts in Vegas? Cam doesn't think so: the city is a major hub for the snakes. Apparently Goa'uld like glitz.

The smile that flickers across Sheppard's face is genuine, but fleeting. "No, I mean _gone_. Someone blew it to hell, and Kiralla with it. That's what that noise we heard was, not an earthquake or a nuclear plant blowing."

Cam's having a hard time imagining the entire city of Las Vegas gone. "All of Vegas? And--wait. Kiralla's dead?" Kiralla, who claimed all of North America and a good chunk of Central America as her territory. Shit, that really threw everything into play.

"Oh, yeah. Half of southern Nevada's gone, as far as anyone can tell. She's dead, and a bunch of other snakes with her." Sheppard smiles again, but it's a new smile, one Cam doesn't recognize.

Cam blinks slowly. "So what's that mean?"

"Things are a mess in Frisco," continues Sheppard, not really answering the question. He wraps one arm over his head and cracks his neck resoundingly. "Lugh's holed up on Treasure Island, killing anyone who comes close, and the Jaffa are strafing the city randomly. But he's getting no support from outside. I saw--" He pauses, meets Cam's eyes for a moment, and looks away. "Some guy on the waterfront had a Jaffa scalp."

"Jesus." That is one visual Cam could live without. "Yeah."

Sheppard closes his mouth and stares at the dying fire for a long moment, and then sits up, leaning in towards Cam. His arms are propped on his knees, his face earnest. "Here's the thing, Mitchell. There's all sorts of rumors out there, crazy shit, about what's going down. But I got a story from a guy I trust, an old buddy in Fairfield. And I think--well, if it's true..."

The wind is picking up, enough to make Cam nervous about fire season; last summer they nearly lost everything when a lightning strike set a monster blaze in the hills north of Quincy. This breeze doesn't carry any smoke, though: just that redolent odor of the mountains of California--pine and the ever-present dust. It blows Cam's hair into his eyes, making him blink. Time for another haircut, or maybe he'll just follow Swinton's lead and grow a ponytail.

"What's the story?"

Sheppard's grin is feral. "That it was the military that took down Kiralla, not another snake. That Boston's down, too, and Chicago and New Orleans. The story is that there isn't a free Jaffa east of the Rockies."

Cam shoots to his feet. "You're shitting me!"

"For once, no, I'm not." Sheppard turns around and digs into his pack, pulling out a slip of paper. "And I think there's a way to prove it. This is the frequency Fernando gave me."

When Cam opens his hand, Shep reaches up and drops the crumbled scrap of paper into it. The ink is smudged, but the numbers are clear enough. Cam straightens it, smoothing it out; it's half of a Post-It note, the yellow faded to a dull beige. "You didn't check it?"

Sheppard shakes his head. "Figured it was your call." Cam can almost hear the "sir," there. Grudging respect from Sheppard is nearly as good as a ticker-tape parade.

*

The first time Cam met John Sheppard was five days after the Goa'uld attack, and Cam was raiding a hardware store twenty miles south of Boise for ammunition and camping supplies.

It was past midnight and the place looked empty, front door locked and the windows boarded up, but one of the high rear windows had been forced open. Cam wasn't stupid enough to miss an opportunity. Inside, it was clear that the owners were looking after the place: the shelves were empty but not knocked over, perishables neatly packed into redolent garbage bags piled next to the rear doors. The rows of electrical wire and plumbing supplies looked relatively untouched, but the racks near the front where the Doritos and jerky would be stored were empty in the illumination of Cam's flashlight.

It was unlikely he would find any ammunition left here: it all looked pretty picked over. However, walking carefully down the yard care aisle, Cam realized there was a glimmer of light in the rear of the building, back in the employees-only section. He followed it back to a doorway that looked like it had been hidden behind stacks of lumber and furnace filters, now piled on the floor instead. The lock had been forced, and faint light spilled through the narrow opening of the doorway.

When Cam swung the door open, weapon raised, he saw a dark-haired guy in a leather jacket and jeans, neatly decanting boxes of shotgun shells into a backpack. Cam shifted his weight, the leather of his flight jacket crackling; the man didn't look up, but said, "You can take what you want when I'm done." There was a wicked-looking shotgun on the floor next to him, along with a SIG Sauer and a long hunting knife.

Cam watched for a moment, and then said, "That won't kill them. You're better off with a rifle."

That got the guy's attention. He looked up sharply, the light from the flashlight picking out the bristles on his face. A glint at the neck of his t-shirt looked suspiciously like a dog-tag chain. "What do you mean?" The tone was wary, but he didn't reach for a weapon.

Cam lowered his weapon, putting the safety on. "The Jaffa--the guys with the tattoos? Regular shotguns won't work. They have a thing, a worm in their bellies, that heals 'em. P-90s are better, or maybe a SPAS."

That got him a raised eyebrow, and then a slow nod. "Thanks for the background." There was a long pause as the guy examined Cam, and then he asked, "Military?"

"Cameron Mitchell, Lieutenant Colonel," said Cam. "You from Mountain Home too?"

"306th," the guy said with another nod. "Pavehawks."

The 306th was one of the Air Force's helicopter rescue squadrons; right now most of the unit was doing combat search and rescue in Afghanistan. Cam winced in sympathy. "Home on leave just in time for the alien invasion?"

"Bad timing." The other man shrugged. "So, you know something about these guys. You got a plan?"

Cam put on his most charming smile. "Yeah, I got a plan." Sort of.

"That's good. A plan is good." The chopper pilot looked down for a long moment, and then dumped out his pack, sending ammo boxes clattering across the floor. He stood up and offered his hand. "John Sheppard." Almost unwillingly, Cam thought, he added, "Major."

Cam shook enthusiastically. "Good to meet you, Major. Let's load up and get out of here. Unless you've got somewhere else you need to be?"

Sheppard looked around the dingy storage room and shook his head. "Nah, I'm good."

*

The radio is buried in Cam's pack, carefully swathed in an ancient pair of boxers. The batteries are wrapped separately, and tumble out into Cam's hands. Sheppard raises an eyebrow at the boxers, but says nothing. They crouch over the device, barely larger than the walky-talkies Cam played with as a kid, and Cam crosses his fingers ritually before twisting the knob to "on".

There's a soft hiss: at least it works. He glances up to see Sheppard's face is as intent as his own.

"C'mon, baby, you can do it," Cam says, and swivels the tuner. 22, 24, 27. There it is.

Nothing. Not even static. Sheppard shifts his weight, twisting one booted foot into the dirt. Back and forth he swings his heel, back and forth, digging a hole into the forest duff. "We're in the mountains," he says quietly. As if reluctant to hope. "Reception's not gonna--"

There's a crackle. "Quiet!" Cam grabs Sheppard's arm hard, then lets go so he can play with the tuner a little more.

Crackle, wobble, moan, _"--third week of September. You got that?"_ A man's voice, echoing weirdly through the speaker.

_"Yes, sir,"_ says another voice, this one a woman's. _"We can make that deadline."_ Sir? mouths Sheppard, his eyebrows going up.

_"There any intel from the left coast yet? I'm getting nervous about the snakes out there. They still haven't made a move on the gate."_

_"Just rumors from my contacts,"_ says a third voice. _"Nothing solid. Chokowski, you got anything?"_

_"Nothing, sorry. Nobody's come up the coast in the last couple months, and the snakes are locked down tight, nobody's talking."_

Sheppard pokes Cam, one sharp finger grinding into Cam's ribs. "There's your cue, Colonel."

"Yeah, right." Cam's mouth is dry. It all seems kind of unreal. He picks up the radio in a sweaty hand and flips the switch to broadcast. "I may have intel on California for you." He meets Sheppard's eyes: they are wide with controlled hilarity.

_"Who's that?"_ The voice is sharp with suspicion.

Guess it doesn't matter if he says it: the snakes never knew his name. "Lieutenant Colonel Cameron Mitchell, US Air Force. I'm in the mountains in northern California, about two hundred miles east of San Francisco."

_"Mitchell?"_ The woman's voice is sharp. _"Cam? Oh my god!"_ Cam frowns. She sounds vaguely familiar, through the distance and the hiss. _"Cam, it's Sam Carter. I can't believe you're still alive! I thought you were at Peterson!"_

Cam nearly drops the radio. Sam Carter, who'd sent him a highly ambiguous email just before he went back to Idaho to clean out his apartment, an email that made him wonder if she knew more than she was saying about his new posting.

Before he can reply, the other voice cuts in again, the older man. Sounds like a senior officer, and not one of those back room Pentagon generals. _"You'll vouch for him, Carter?"_

Cam's getting whiplash, here sitting on a splintery log in the woods, mouth still bitter with the taste of bad instant coffee and arms covered with mosquito bites. Talking to Samantha Carter, who'd blown everyone away--not that way--on their final exams and then shot up the specialist track like a rocket. The last time Cameron saw her, three years ago at some Academy function, she was walking stiffly, makeup carefully covering an ugly bruise on her cheekbone. When he asked, she told him a great story about a motorcycle crash: now he wonders.

Cam tunes back into the conversation to realize he's been asked a direct question. "I've been running an operation out of the mountains here, sir. There's about twenty of us, mostly civilians and a few military. We hit when we can, and we've done some damage, but not as much as I'd like." He pauses, tries to phrase the first of many questions, but before he has a chance to, Sheppard's grabbed the radio out of his hand.

"Is it true? About the snakes?" Sheppard's hand is clutching the radio hard enough to crack the plastic; Cam can see the casing flex.

_"Who is this, now?"_

"Major John Sheppard, sir. And you are?" Sheppard's voice betrays nothing of what his face shows: a hopeful desperation Cam has never seen before.

_"Colonel Jack O'Neill, Major. Looks like it's old home week here for airmen. Now put Mitchell back on. I've got questions of my own."_

*

The first time Cameron Mitchell really understood the price of this war was on the dark porch of a log cabin six miles north of Auburn, in the Sierra foothills.

The action started like clockwork. It was early morning of the third day Lugh's Jaffa occupied Auburn, and the locals weren't coming out of their houses for love or money.

Perez and Flint hit the Jaffa from the side as they marched along the high street, dropping two of them with amateurish molotov cocktails, and then ran for it. The Jaffa chased them, of course--Lugh had issued standing orders to punish all resistance ruthlessly, in order to consolidate his hold on the region. Cameron had counted on that in his planning.

Perez and Flint were his two fastest men, although Sheppard and Kelly had more stamina: they led the Jaffa past the courthouse and up the hill into the historic residential neighborhood, where the trees were tall enough and the houses clustered close enough to interfere with Death Glider runs.

The signal came from Sheppard just as Perez shot through the brush into the small playground; Cam breathed out slowly and resisted the urge to check his weapon once more. Close behind Flint came the Jaffa, four six eight ten--"Now!" Cam shouted, surging to his feet.

Weaponsfire sounded all around him, Manny muttering to Cam's right as he fired, swore, fired again. Cam swung the muzzle of the P-90 in a slow arc, sweeping across the clearing, angling away from the spot where Perez and Flint had dropped to the ground. It was his first ground-combat action, and the noise was deafening.

Four, six, eight, ten twenty seconds. Cam stopped shooting, lowering his weapon. "Cease fire!" he yelled. "Cease fire, already!" Manny was still firing, but nothing moved in the playground. Cam grabbed Manny's shoulder. "Stop! Manny, that's enough!"

Manny wrenched against him for a moment, and then froze, his face going pale. "Oh my god." Cam patted his shoulder and shifted forward to look out at the carnage. Sheppard shouted something off to the left and the gunfire died away.

"Coming out!" shouted Cam, and stepped cautiously into the clear, holding his weapon at the ready. Nothing moved.

Nothing could: the Jaffa were all dead. They lay collapsed against each other, blood marring their shining armor in the growing daylight.

One of them, a young redheaded man, was draped over the spring-mounted bouncing horse, hand still clutching his staff weapon. A corner of his cloak was caught in the wide and rusting coils of the horse. As Cam watched, his face relaxed and his hand opened, letting the staff slide to the ground, where sand clotted the blood on its grip.

There was a rustle from the other side of the playground. "Colonel? Shit! Peter! Oh, man, no!"

Flint was on his face in the sandbox. Perez crouched over him, blotting helplessly at the blood spreading from two places on his back. Cam dropped to his knees, reached a hand out, and then dropped it. There wasn't anything he could do, except--

The angle of impact made it clear Flint was hit by friendly fire. Not Cam, thank god, but someone. One of their own, panicked in the crunch. It happened; but Cam wasn't going to watch it happen again.

"Manny, get him bandaged any way you can. Sheppard, you take them back. I'll meet you at the rendezvous."

Sheppard's voice came from behind Cam. "Nah, I've got a better idea."

Flint was still bleeding around the t-shirt Manny was shoving against his back. "What?" Cam said, swinging his head around to stare at Sheppard. Kelly's face was blank, her eyes wide as she looked from Cam to Sheppard and back.

Sheppard took a step backwards, folding his arms to rest over his P-90. His face was unreadable. "Some of the squadron got away," he said. "Someone has to warn these people." He lifted a hand off the weapon and gestured at the lovely old Victorians around them. A door slammed in the distance, and a dog barked, underlining the argument.

Cam ground his teeth. "And someone needs to get Flint some help." Shit. He wasn't going to leave Flint, and the squad was too green to get home by themselves.

"If the Jaffa come back, he's dead anyway."

"Fine," said Cam, feeling the seconds tick away with the blood from Flint's wounds. "I'll take Flint, you warn the neighbors. Kelly, you take the team back. Got it? Go!"

Flint was a skinny young man, a high school track star and college journalist with a talent for raunchy limericks. He wasn't as heavy as Cam had feared, but he grew heavier as Cam stumbled downhill towards the business district and the tiny clinic that had stayed open despite the occupation. Nobody was about: few residents would be willing to leave their houses until long after the shooting was over. Halfway to his destination, he heard the distinctive sound of a Death Glider above, and dove into a backyard raspberry patch, crouching low until it died away in the distance.

The clinic was locked, but the blood from Flint's wound was now dripping off his hands, spotting the ground. Cam forced the door and stumbled into the waiting room. Instead of uncomfortable chairs and side tables covered with old copies of _People_ and _Highlights_, he found an angry young woman in a lab coat over sweats. He ignored her protests and shoved through the inner door, staggering with exhaustion, and laid Flint down on an examination table. When he unwrapped the bandages--such as they were--she stopped yelling and came to look, hands delving in her pockets and emerging empty.

Then she looked a little closer and stopped. "Oh."

Flint was dead. Probably had been for most of the trip down the hill.

The rest of the day was boring by comparison: apologizing to the doctor, cleaning the bloodstains off the doorstep of the clinic, and bushwhacking across country to the rendezvous. Cam didn't see any Jaffa after mid-morning, but two more Gliders went by as he crouched in the underbrush.

The rendezvous was a log cabin some miles out of town, an empty vacation home for some rich Bay Area yuppie. It had parquet floors, a granite fireplace, and a solar-powered well. Manny challenged Cam at the edge of the yard--_at least they have a watch,_ he thought blearily--and then waved him in. Not even thinking about the possibility of snakes, of hosts and symbiotes.

They had so much to learn. All of them.

Word about Flint passed quickly; Cam only had to say it twice. Kelly gave him water in a heavy hand-thrown mug, some treasure from an arts and crafts fair on the streets of Berkeley or Palo Alto. He wrapped his hands around the mug and drank, closing his eyes against the look on her face.

Sheppard arrived about three hours later, close to midnight. "Done," he said, leaning against the outside wall of the cabin, his face shadowed with exhaustion, barely visible in the light of a quarter moon. "I got the word out, anyway. There wasn't--I couldn't catch the Jaffa squadron, couldn't get enough of them to shut it down. They'll hit the town hard."

Cam frowned; the blood on Sheppard's sleeve wasn't just from that morning, then. "I thought you were just going to warn the locals."

Pale grey moved against darker grey as Sheppard took a drink of water. "Figured it might be better to stop the message from getting through at all. Didn't work." He went on, "Had a couple of Jaffa on my trail this afternoon, but I lost them. Took a while, though."

"They--" Cam stopped and shook his head. If Sheppard had gotten himself captured, they'd all be dead now. "Christ, Sheppard. You weren't home on leave from Afghanistan, were you. What'd you do? Pull this kind of shit over there? Defy a direct order? How many people died--" Beside him, Sheppard's body had stiffened, his face going even more blank, more unreadable than it usually was. "Sheppard--"

Cam never got to finish the question. Because Manny yelled, a staff weapon went off, and the Jaffa who had followed Sheppard back to the rendezvous attacked.

Manny died. So did three other team members. Lugh killed twenty residents of Auburn, including the young doctor, in retribution for the attack.

*

The whoops from the team fill the clearing. Cam grins and slaps backs, and swings Kelly around, her boots kicking at his shins, until she squawks. He sees Sheppard from the corner of his eye, smiling lopsidedly but dodging most of his teammates' enthusiasm. If they had any alcohol, they'd have a party--but Harte, it turns out, has some grass. Cam's not going to argue it: he knows how to pick his battles. He manages to insist that somebody keep watch, and volunteers for the second shift.

It seems kind of pointless, though, standing watch in the woods as the stars climb past the trees overhead. Harte and Sherry Gilman, fifty yards away, are making so much noise that the Jaffa could find them blindfolded. Cam shrugs and stays where he is, leaning against the bole of yet another damned pine tree.

The Goa'uld and Jaffa aren't entirely gone, but Cam got enough from that speedy debrief this afternoon to learn that it's all over but the shouting. And that when the history is told, it'll be O'Neill and Carter who get books written about them, and kids named after them. Maybe even statues. Because Cam's little gang of roughnecks took out three Jaffa convoys and once downed a Death Glider--while O'Neill blew up Las Vegas and in one stroke crippled the Goa'uld invasion force.

"Whoop. De. Doo." Cam tosses a pine cone into the center of the trail, and then follows it with another. The second one misses--it is dark, after all--and he swears under his breath and lets his head thunk back against the tree. "God, I'm a jerk." It doesn't matter who did it--it just matters that it got done.

"You think that's some kind of secret, Mitchell?" Sheppard's voice comes out of the darkness to his left.

"Oh, fuck off, Sheppard." Cam winces; that isn't the sort of thing he says to his team. There's a short silence, followed by a rustle: Sheppard's leaving. "No, wait," Cam fumbles. "Sorry, I didn't--" He can't finish the sentence. Didn't mean to say it, but he did. He really _is_ a jerk.

"Doesn't matter," says Sheppard after a moment, his voice amused. Not an apology--but he's not leaving either.

Cam stares at the stars, catching a whiff of pot smoke as the wind shifts. "Oh, god," he says suddenly, and snickers.

"What?"

"Midnight munchies. There isn't gonna be _anything_ left to eat for breakfast."

Sheppard laughs quietly. "You're not wrong."

There's a roar from the campsite; Cam suspects if the party were indoors there would be broken furniture by morning. He chews his lip, scratches at a mosquito bite in his arm, thinking. "We'll have to move down into the Valley, maybe tomorrow or the day after. Start building connections openly, find community leaders. Network." The war might be over, but he's not off the clock yet.

There's a grunt from Sheppard: agreement, acknowledgement, something. Then: "You know..."

"What?" Cam wants to sleep for a week.

"You're not as bad at this as you think."

Sleep would be great: but a six-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale would be even better. And a shower. And a pizza; one of the good fresh ones from an honest-to-god pizza shop, not a freezer. "But I'm still bad at it."

"Oh, yeah."

"Right." Nothing like a 2IC who knows how to burst your bubble. "But you're sticking around, right?"

Another long pause. "Yeah, well... not much of a job market for professional surfers right now."

"Alright, then." A mosquito buzzes past Cam's face. Sherry and Harte have shut up, thankfully. He can't help smiling. The war is over.

"I was wondering," says Sheppard. "Think maybe they'll name a beer after us?"

END

**Author's Note:**

> NOTES: The 306th RQS is an Air Force Reserve squadron, not a regular service squadron, and they're based in Oregon, not Idaho. I do hope they don't mind being adopted for the purpose of this story. If you have any interest, the RQS teams do amazing work, including refueling their helicopters in the air from a C130, and jumping out of helicopters to rescue soldiers in combat.
> 
> Other notes: Many thanks to [](http://vee-fic.livejournal.com/profile)[**vee_fic**](http://vee-fic.livejournal.com/) for the thoughtful beta. And to [](http://somedaybitch.livejournal.com/profile)[**somedaybitch**](http://somedaybitch.livejournal.com/) and [](http://thassalia.livejournal.com/profile)[**thassalia**](http://thassalia.livejournal.com/) for the enthusiasm. I honestly didn't expect to be writing any more of this series, and yet here we are.


End file.
